Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1887-05-05
WILL 1T COLLAPSE.
Prof. Swing, of Chicago, Gives His
Opinion ofthe Natural Gas Boom.

FrOI. swing, OF ChlcaSo, wives hls
Opinion ofth Natural Gas Boom.
Prof. David Swing, one of the best
read and most thoroughly educated di-
vines of Chicago, utters word of warm
ing to those engaged in boring for nat
ural gas, predicting that the emptying
of the vacuum now filled with gas, in
the bowels of the earth, will be follow
ed by the collapse of the earth and
swallowing up of the inhabitants there
of. That will end the Findlay boom,
sure. Here is what Swing says in the
Chicago Journal:
"One little knows whether to be
clad or sorry over the tremendous dis
covery of natural gas. 1t is all very
we'll for the furnaces of thousand
mills and the cooking stoves of q mil
lion families to be heated by simply
tapping the earth with a sharp stick
Pittsburg, Findlay and Toledo may
feel quite happy over the fact that the
average wife can run the cooking
range and furnace for SIS year. Mar
riages should increase under this new
cheapness of warmth in the parlor and
under the pot, but while this broad
grin of complacency is occupying num-
berless faces, what does the Mother
Earth think of all this meddling with
her internal affairs? Does not the
story of the goose and the golden egg
come in here as warning. The fell
low in that fable bored into his valua-
BILE goose and got his egg long in ad-
vance of the almanac, but on the next
day the producer herself was dead
The Earth, for all we know, may be
like the goose, and may be bored for
gas and bored to death at the same
time. The boys on the street are phil
osophic enough to say:
GAN that goes up must come down,
Each look out for his own CROWN
or words to that effect; but we older
heads have by some foolishness of logic
reached the conclusion that if billions
of cubic feet of gas squirt up, nothing
need come down but the price of gas.
What infamous nonsense! The COM
ing down ofthe price is no price of the
equation. Sucn talk is what is called
in logic "the undisturbed middle", the
act of falling being affirmed of different
quantity from that of which the going
up WAnf AiAkucuk lnC UuyS WSIc IiSIlt1
and a going-uD of material must be
attended by a coming down of materi-
al.
"At Findlay, O., 100000 of cubic
feet of gas pass daily out into the upper
air. At Pittsburg, at Erie, at Toledo,
at Portland, Ind, and at hundreds of
other points millions upon millions of
such cubic feet pass from the interior
of the planet. Now, nature does not
like vacuum any more in our day
than she liked one In the times of Tor
ricelli, and Pascal; nor, as Pascal show
ed, does she like one any more at the
foot of o mountain than she does on
the mountains top. We may, there
fore, feel we'll assured that as rapidly as
man bores the stuff out of the globe
its large guardian, Nature, will be com
PEELED to put stuff into the globe.
Sat New Madrid, in 1911, district
of land 100 miles long, settled down to
fill up vacancy made by some old Ol
new "bore,n and some parts of the
Texan coasts have sunk now within 6
few years for the purpose of filling in
what quantity somebody or something
drew out What must we expect now
when every man In Indiana and Ohio !:
going about with drill with the inten
of letting out some more of the ga!
that fills our big balloon?
ut is perfectly absurd to say that
''the gas need not come out unless il
wants to; nobody forces it out; 1t comes
out because it is too much crowded. -
It is crowded by the land that lies on it
and its anxiety to rise up comes from
the anxiety of the land to go down.
sit is not the design of these words tc
convert anybody. Not a single drill
will be arrested by such warnings
But that fact does not affect the genera
question whether man is not capable o
turning this globe inside out and max
ing his atmosphere deeper above him
and the ground shallower under him
Is comet gaseous ball? It so ap
pears. The earth will not rapid,
shrink. If it should not uniformly
no harm would be done, for earth di.
minished by five miles in diamete
would be none the worse for that; bu
we are sorry to remark that our bal
has the bad habit of going down il
some one place at one time. If Indi
ana and this general region shoul,
sink Just little, the lakes would rusl
into the homes of these jolly gas borers
the st. Lawrence would pass towart
the Gulf of Mexico over the place
where Toledo and Findlay are nov
dancing in such high glee.
"Of course this outcome of natura
gas may not come this summer nor tn
summer after For the particulars w
must wait till the matter shall hav
been investigated by experts in thes,
things, which are at once tremendou
\ and alarming.n